“Anthrax Probe Story Is Baloney, FBI Says,” Columbus Dispatch, December 21, 2001 [Ed Lake’s theory was first to be debunked; but he persisted for 7 years, denying Hatfill was a suspect and reasoning the FBI suspected this POI]

ENGELBERG, STEPHEN (if you need to be told too often of incredible work done by ProPublica, McClatchy and Frontline, you just aren’t paying attention)
Their work is all the more impressive because they invested the resources to make documents and transcripts and raw interviews available. Donate to public interest journalism today.

GANNON, KATHY [Her book “I is for Infidel” should be put on your list of books to read; she has deep experience in that part of the world; she was there at the Taliban vaccine lab with the photographer taking pictures of the brown slurry harvested June 2001 that Yazid wouldn’t identify for me.]

“Taliban Showed Interest In Anthrax Research Lab. Scientists Say An Official Paid Frequent Visits” in The Boston Globe, November 22, 2001

GARRETT, LAURIE (at book sales, when I’m in the relevant section people more than once have commented that her past books were very good). She worked at Newsday previously.

RAZAK, AIDILA (the reporter I most would like to have over for dinner; the series she and her colleagues did was Yazid Sufaat was amazing journalism; I don’t have a link to the one explaining Sufaat was a member of a since abandoned Malaysian biological weapons program. But IMO it is the single most important article that has been done. A subscription is required for the articles)

Yazid hails 9/11 attackers as ‘marketers of Islam’ (Yazid is actually a very nice guy; he should just be a truth-teller and let Allah sort out his secular concerns).http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/192681

SCROGGINS, DEBORAH (the world’s expert on and author of a book on Aafia Siddiqui, she is an experienced journalist)

“The Most Wanted Woman in the World,” Vanity Fair, March 2005

SHARAF-AL-DIN, KHALID (if you don’t understand the reports of the defendants in the trial relating to the Albanian Returnees, then you weren’t going to be informed in profiling the Fall 2001 anthrax mailings).

Is it possible that Director Mueller, an intelligent man, doesn't know the FBI has failed to make its case against Dr. Ivins? And what does it mean if he knows but won't admit it?

******

William Broad and Scott Shane write in the NYT (10/9/11) …

biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the FBI’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues.

three scientists argue that distinctive chemicals found in the dried anthrax spores — including the unexpected presence of tin — point to a high degree of manufacturing skill, contrary to federal reassurances that the attack germs were unsophisticated. The scientists make their case in a coming issue of the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense.

Both the chairwoman of a National Academy of Science (NAS) panel

that spent a year and a half reviewing the F.B.I.’s scientific work

and the director of a new review by the Government Accountability Office (GAO)

said the paper raised important questions that should be addressed.

Alice P. Gast, president of Lehigh University and the head of the academy panel, said that the paper “points out connections that deserve further consideration.”

Dr. Gast, a chemical engineer, said the “chemical signatures”

in the mailed anthrax and their potential value to the criminal investigation

had not been fully explored.

She also noted that the academy panel suggested a full review

of classified government research on anthrax,

which her panel never saw.

In interviews, the three authors said their analysis suggested that the F.B.I. might have pursued the wrong suspect and that the case should be reopened.

Their position may embolden calls for a national commission to investigate the first major bioterrorist attack in American history.

Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said the paper provided “no evidence whatsoever that the spores used in the mailings were produced” at a location other than Fort Detrick. He said investigators believe Dr. Ivins grew and dried the anthrax spores himself. “We stand by our conclusion.”

In addition to Dr. Hugh-Jones, the authors of the new paper are Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a biologist, and Stuart Jacobsen, a chemist; both have speculated publicly about the case and criticized the F.B.I. for years.

In 2008, days after Dr. Ivins’s suicide, the bureau made public a sweeping but circumstantial case against him. Last year, the bureau formally closed the case, acknowledging that some scientific questions were unanswered but asserting that the evidence against Dr. Ivins was overwhelming.

Yet no evidence directly tied Dr. Ivins to the crime.

Some of the scientist’s former colleagues have argued that he could not have made the anthrax and that investigators hounded a troubled man to death.

In its report last February, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel sharply criticized some of the F.B.I.’s scientific work, saying the genetic link between the attack anthrax and a supply in Dr. Ivins’s lab was “not as conclusive” as the bureau asserted.

If the authors of the new paper are correct about the silicon-tin coating, it appears likely that Dr. Ivins could not have made the anthrax powder alone with the equipment he possessed, as the F.B.I. maintains.

That would mean either that he got the powder from elsewhere

or that he was not the perpetrator.

If Dr. Ivins did not make the powder, one conceivable source might be classified government research on anthrax, carried out for years by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency. Dr. Ivins had ties to several researchers who did such secret work.

The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is conducting its own review (still ongoing) of the anthrax evidence. Nancy Kingsbury, the official overseeing the project, said the agency had spoken with the paper’s authors and judged that “their questions are reasonable.”

Several anthrax scientists who reviewed the new paper at the request of The Times said they believed it neglected the possibility that the tin and silicon were meaningless contaminants rather than sophisticated additives.

Dr. Gast, the head of the National Academy of Sciences panel, noted that her group strongly recommended that future investigations of the attacks examine the government’s classified work on anthrax.

She called access to secret records “an important aspect of providing more clarity on what we know and what we don’t know.”

LMW COMMENT …

I have long held that the FBI’s publicly presented case against Dr. Ivins is clearly bogus: no evidence, no witnesses, an impossible timeline, science that proves innocence instead of guilt. So what really happened?And why doesn’t the FBI offer America a credible story?

As regular readers of this blog well know, I can imagine only 3 possible “actual” scenarios …

The FBI has more evidence against Dr. Ivins but is, for some undisclosed reason, withholding that evidence …POSSIBLE BUT NOT SO LIKELY

The FBI, despite the most expensive and extensive investigation in its history, has not solved the case and has no idea who prepared and mailed the anthrax letters that killed 5 Americans in 2001 …EVEN LESS LIKELY

The FBI knows who did it (not Dr. Ivins) but is covering up the actual perpetrators, for undisclosed reasons …THE MOST LIKELY SCENARIO

When I first heard the FBI/DOJ August 2008 press conference, I was infuriated. It was obvious to me even then that the FBI had no case, or at least no case they chose to make publicly known. Since I’m a novelist, I focused my anger and wrote CASE CLOSED, a fictional account of what might have happened in the anthrax attacks and subsequent FBI investigation. The novel has been published and is available at amazon …